Monday, August 29, 2005

Over the years I've observed that those who are selling the sleds despise "slippery slope" arguments. They despise them most when they're vivid, accurate, and alarming.

For instance, when folks like Jack Rogers and other "evangelicals" of the Fuller Seminary ilk more formally assaulted the Biblical doctrine of the inerrrancy of Scripture, Harold Lindsell and a host of others argued that a host of doctrinal and practical perversions would necessarily follow. The earlier champions of an unreliable Bible scoffed. History has proven the scoffers to be fools.

Now, with the heretofore unimaginable advent of "gay" "marriage," we critics have once again peered down the slope, and again described what we saw coming. If two men indulging perverse sexual practices together can be legitimatized with any legal status ("domestic partners"), it can also eventually be called "marriage." If it can be called "marriage," then no other sexual practice can be ruled out. Incest is the most likely successor, followed perhaps by pederasty and bestiality.

Peddlers of sleds for this particular slope scoffed, predictably. They hated the argument. They hated it because there was no counter, and it was so damning.

Now comes the case of brother and sister Allen and Patricia Muth, whose sexual relationship produced four children. They were roundly condemned by Milwaukee County Judge David Hansher, and thrown into prison, their parental rights repealed.

But that was 1997. A lot has changed since then. Allen is appealing his conviction, on the basis of -- you guessed it -- the legal recognition of the validity of homosexual relations. Read about it in the great Jeff Jacoby's Trying to outrun Lawrence.

Every step away from God is a progressively ugly one. That reality is spelled out in Romans 1:18-32, to say nothing of the entire Old Testament. Yet professing Christians don't seem to get this message today, as they repeatedly "improve" on what God says about Christian living and thinking, marriage, church, and child-training.

If they don't get it, one can hardly expect non-Christians to get it.

But if we don't make the case, if we don't describe the slope and warn against heading down it (Proverbs 10:11; 11:9, 11; 24:11-12), who will?